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难以在短时间内一蹴而就的，而取得任何等级的英文考试的作文高分也是令大多数考生们最为头疼的事情之一。

那么我们为什么害怕英文写作考试呢？为什么有些同学即便背了1-2万单词却仍然写不出漂亮的文章呢？为什么很多同学练好了发音，但是依然无法出口成章呢？找到了这一系列问题的答案，大家就真正抓住了提高写作能力和口语能力的关键。

首先，我们可将几乎所有人都存在的英文写作的困境归为以下三类：

---困境1：面对一个题目，根本无话可说，即便用中文写，都写不出内容。 ---困境2：有话可说，有内容可写，但是用英文表达的支离破碎，完全不能用英文来表达出自己想要表达的含义。

---困境3：有话说，也能用英文表达出自己要表达的意思，但是写出来的或者说出来的语言却都是“满篇尽带Chinglish（中国式英语）”。

若一个人在英文写作上存在问题，一定可归为上述三类之一。 既然我们已经对中国考生所面临的写作问题有了清晰的梳理和认识，那么该如何从上述的困境中走出，如何能真正并有针对性的提高自己的语言表达能力呢。

其实答案很简单，就两个字------素材！

面对一个话题，我们之所以无法写出连贯的文字，无法流畅的口语表达，都是因为我们没有写作素材以及说话的素材。那么素材是什么？其实也就是我们所说的“言之有物”中的“物”。当我们写作的时候，无论是四、六级写作，还是考研写作，或是托福、雅思、SAT、GRE、GMAT写作，我们之所以无法取得高分，其根本原因是因为我们日常积累的英文论证素材以及论据素材过于贫乏，以至于“书到用时方恨少”，我们根本没法将零星散落于我们大脑各个角落，不成体系的素材组合起来，形成一篇逻辑严密、语言优美地道的英语作文。

因此，英文素材的积累和素材库的建立是可以真正帮助中国英语爱好者、中国广大英语考生提高写作能力，走出写作困境的“捷径”。

正如前面所说，英语写作素材包含两类：一类是论证素材，即对于论点进行理论分析的素材。例如：论证竞争机制的重要性、论证环境保护的必要性、论证艺术的价值等；一类是论据素材，即可支撑论点的相关事例。例如：“钻石教父”雷维夫与DeBeers公司的竞争促进了整个钻石行业的发展，可用来支撑“竞争机制的重要性”的论证；再例，引用美国政府参与环境保护的例子可佐证“环境保护的必要性”；还有，引用贝多芬、巴赫、凡高的例子可说明伟大的艺术家们的艺术作品是如何推动人类文明的发展，用以例证“艺术的价值”。

其实我们只要多掌握适用于所准备的写作考试的英文写作素材（论证素材+论据素材），就已经为写出有理有据的漂亮的文章打下了一个99%的基础，其实这也就是写作的前提。因为任何语言学习，或者说任何学习过程，都遵循了一个“输入---输出”的模式。如果没有输入，则永远不可能输出；若没有好的输入，则永远不可能有

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不会写”，这里的“听”和“读”就是输入环节，“说”和“写”就是输出环节，我们只有输入了好的英文素材，才能在需要的地方进行输出。

考生结合GMAT写作论证论据素材工具书进行GMAT考试的备考，可达到事半功倍的效果。

第一，本书详尽的话题分类可保证考生在论述每个复杂的GMAT Issue命题的时候，能够游刃有余，言之有物，关键是有话可说而且写的有理有据。第二，本书一共20大类话题，完全覆盖GMAT Issue话题库，与此同时，每一个大类下面又下辖属于该类的GMAT Issue官方题库的原题题目，这样大家在分析以及备考每一个题目的时候，能有针对性的查找到该题所能利用的论证或者论据素材。例如，科技类话题下，有“论证科技发展的积极影响”、“论证科技发展的负面影响”、“人类如何利用科技这把双刃剑”、“科学与哲学的关系”、“科学与宗教的关系”、“科学与艺术的关系”等等英文论证以及论据素材段落，从而能够全面覆盖GMAT写作中科技类话题所涉及的知识范围以及命题范围，同时每个主题段落都是以“标题”、“段落中文大意”、“英文段落”三部分构成，英文段落部分是严谨、地道、直接可用的英文素材，这样又能保证大家一目了然的知晓该段落的论述内容和论述功能，以及可用于哪个话题或者主题。

本书具有以下特点：

◆全面性：全面补充GRE写作Issue部分所涉及到的所有话题的英文论证素材以及英文论据素材，解决考生面对Issue题目无话可说，无例可举的困境。

◆文化性：书中所有的论证以及论据素材段落都是从辨证的角度去补充大量的权威的论证分析的英文论证段落和论据段落，力求做到让考生在备考的过程中，始终沉浸于思辨的海洋和文化历史的长河中，尤其给中国考生补充所不熟悉的西方世界的教育、法律、文化、科技、历史等方面内容。

◆权威性：汇集世界顶级外文期刊、报纸、书籍、检索数据库和权威的新闻网站的英文内容，例如：《经济学家》、《时代周刊》、《科学》、《大英百科全书》、维基（Wiki）英文百科全书、《微软百科全书》等权威刊物。

◆指导性：汇集新东方GRE考试培训项目数年的教学精华及笔者在新东方讲台上多年GRE写作的教学成果，内容具有极强的指导性和操作性。

◆针对性：本书针对中国考生写作中存在的弱点，全面提升考生的写作实力。

第二章 GRE Issue写作论证论据素材库

第一大类：社会类

1 社会发展的三大理论

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change were created: the sociocultural evolutionism, the social cycle theory and the Marxist historical materialism theory. Those theories had one common factor: they all agreed that the history of humanity is pursuing a certain fixed path, most likely that of the social progress. Thus, each past event is not only chronologically, but causally tied to the present and future events. Those theories postulated that by recreating the sequence of those events, sociology could discover the laws of history.

4 社会公正的概念

Social justice refers to the concept of a society in which justice is achieved in every aspect of society, rather than merely the administration of law. It generally refers to a society which affords individuals and groups fair treatment and a just share of the benefits of it. It can also refer to the distribution of advantages and disadvantages within a society.

17 社会进步指标

Theorists usually measured progression （that is, the difference between one stage and the next） in terms of increasing social complexity （including class differentiation and a complex division of labor）, or an increase in intellectual, theological, and aesthetic sophistication. Those 19th-century ethnologists used these principles primarily to explain differences in religious beliefs and kinship terminologies among various societies.

18 社会进步与政府干预以及两大社会类型

Society was evolving toward increasing freedom for individuals; and so that government intervention ought to be minimal in social and political life, differentiated between two phases of development, focusing on the type of internal regulation within societies. Military and industrial societies are differentiated. （The earlier, more primitive military society has a goal of conquest and defense, is centralized, economically self-sufficient, collectivistic, puts the good of a group over the good of an individual, uses compulsion, force and repression, and rewards loyalty, obedience and discipline. The industrial society has a goal of production and trade, is decentralized, interconnected with other societies via economic relations, achieves its goals through voluntary cooperation and individual self-restraint,

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and voluntary relations, values initiative, independence and innovation.）

19 技术进步有赖于其他社会组织

The development of technology is dependent on the presence of other types of social organizations. Nobel laureate economist Arthur Lewis observed that the mechanization of factory production in England which became known as the Industrial Revolution was a direct result of the reorganization of English agriculture. The enclosure of common lands in England generated surplus income for the farmers. That extra income generated additional raw materials for industrial processing along with greater demand for industrial products which was difficult to meet by traditional manufacturing processes. The opening of sea trade gave an added boost in demand for industrial production for export. Factory production increased many times when production was reorganized using steam energy combined with moving assembly lines, specialization and division of labor. Thus, technological development was both a result of and a contributing factor to the overall development of society.

20 社会进步与技术革新

Though technological inventions have markedly increased the pace of development, the tendency to view developmental accomplishments as mainly powered by technology is a partial view that misses the bigger picture. Technological innovation was spurred by the general advance in the social organization of knowledge. In the Middle Ages, efforts at scientific creativity were few and isolated from one another, mainly because there were no effective arrangements for the preservation and dissemination of knowledge. Since there was no organized protection for patent rights, scientists and inventors were very secretive about their activities and operations. The establishment of scientific associations and the publication of scientific journals spurred the exchange of knowledge among scientists and created a written record that could be examined by posterity.

23 物质资源和非物质资源在社会发展中的作用

The role of physical resources tends to diminish as society moves to higher levels in the scale of development. Correspondingly the role of

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the most important non-material resources is information, which has become a key input in modern times. Information is a non-material resource that does not get exhausted by distribution or sharing. Greater access to information helps increase the pace of its development.

Ready access to information about economic factors helps investors to immediately transfer capital to those sectors and areas where it will fetch a higher return. The greater input of non-material resources helps explain the rising productivity of societies in spite of a limited physical resource base.

24 非物质资源可以提高物质资源的生产力

The application of higher non-material inputs also raises the productivity of physical inputs. Modern technology has helped increase the proven sources of oil by 50% in recent years and at the same time reduced the cost of search operations by 75%. Moreover, technology has shown that it is possible to reduce the amount of physical inputs in a wide range of activities. Scientific agricultural methods demonstrated that soil productivity could be raised by application of synthetic fertilizers. Dutch farm scientists have demonstrated that a minimal water consumption of 1.4 liters is enough to raise a kilogram of vegetables compared to the thousand liters that traditional irrigation methods normally require. Henry Ford.s assembly line techniques brought down the man-hours of labor required to deliver a car from 783 minutes to 93 minutes. These examples show that the greater input of higher non-material resources can raise the productivity of physical resources and thereby extend their limits.

25 社会文化进化论

Sociocultural evolutionists agree that the evolution-like process leads to social progress. Sociocultural evolutionism represented an attempt to formalize social thinking along scientific lines, which was later influenced by the biological theory of evolution. If organisms could develop over time according to deterministic laws, then it seemed reasonable that societies could as well. They developed analogies between human society and the biological organism and introduced into sociological theory such biological concepts as variation, natural selection, and inheritance—evolutionary

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barbarism to civilization, by virtue of the survival of the fittest. Together with the idea of progress there grew the notion of fixed “stages” through which human societies progress, usually numbering three—savagery, barbarism, and civilization—but sometimes many more.

28 三大概念： 社会地位、 阶层权利、 政治权力

Social Status: If you view someone as a social superior, that person will be able to have power over you because you believe that person has a higher status than you do.

Class Power: This refers to people having unequal access to resources. If you have access to something that someone else needs, that can make you more powerful than the person in need. The person with the resource thus has bargaining power over the other.

Political Power: Political power can influence the hierarchical system of power because those who can influence what laws are passed and how they are applied can exercise power over others.

29 社会机动性与社会地位

In sociology, social stratification is the hierarchical arrangement of social classes, castes and strata within a society. While these hierarchies are not universal to all societies, they are the norm among state-level cultures （as distinguished from hunter-gatherers or other social arrangements）.

Status can be changed through a process of Social Mobility. Social mobility is the change of position within the stratification system. A change in status can be done upwardly in status, upward mobility, or they can move down in status, downward mobility. Social mobility allows for a person to move to another social status other than the one they were born in. Social mobility is more frequent in societies where achievement rather than ascription is the primary basis for social status.

32 工业化带来的问题

Industrialization has spawned its own health problems. Modern stressors include noise, air, water pollution, poor nutrition, dangerous machinery, impersonal work, isolation, poverty, homelessness, and substance abuse. Health problems in industrial nations are as much caused by economic, social,

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major medical issue world-wide.

35 思维创造性与技术

Though many reasons can be cited for the accelerating pace of technological inventions, one major cause is the role played by mental creativity in an increasing atmosphere of freedom. Political freedom and liberation from religious dogma had a powerful impact on creative thinking during the period of Enlightenment. Dogmas and superstitions had an incredibly restrictive effect on the scope for mental creativity. For example, when the astronomer Copernicus proposed a heliocentric view of the world, it was rejected because it did not conform to established religious doctrine. When Galileo perfected a telescope for viewing the planets, his invention was condemned by churchmen as an instrument of the devil as it seemed to be so unusual and hence fit to be deemed heretic. Such obscurantist fetters on freedom of thought were shattered only with the coming of the Enlightenment. From then on the spirit of experimentation began to thrive.

36 互联网使用的四大障碍

It is already received wisdom among those who are working to bridge the digital division that providing access to technology is only one of many obstacles that must be addressed. Internet access is not enough. The Children.s Partnership argues that content is one aspect of the digital division that has been neglected. The four content-related barriers to greater Internet uptake across society are:

1. local information barriers;

2. literacy barriers;

3. language barriers;

4. cultural diversity barriers.

37 完美竞争的概念及其三大要素

The theoretical ideal developed by economists to establish the conditions under which competition would achieve maximum effectiveness is known as “perfect” competition. Although rarely possible, perfect competition, as a concept, provides a useful benchmark for evaluating performance in actual markets. Perfect competition exists when （1） an

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on the average are small; and （3） buyers and sellers have complete knowledge of all transactions within the market. The practical significance of a large number of small firms and many buyers is that the power to influence the behavior of the participants in the market is thoroughly dispersed. In other words, no single person or business has the power to dictate the terms on which the exchange of goods and services takes place. Market results then are truly impersonal. Under conditions of perfect competition, economists contend, goods and services would be produced as efficiently as possible—that is, at the lowest possible price and cost—and consumers would get the maximum amount of the goods and services they desire.

38 不同文化社会对极端行为的态度

The social consequences considered appropriate for unacceptable behavior also vary widely between, and even within, different societies. Punishment of criminals ranges from fines or humiliation to imprisonment or exile, from beatings or mutilation to execution. The form of appropriate punishment is affected by theories of its purpose to prevent or deter the individual from repeating the crime, or to deter others from committing the crime, or simply to cause suffering for its own sake in retribution. The success of punishment in deterring crime is difficult to study, in part because of ethical limitations on experiments assigning different punishments to similar criminals, and in part because of the difficulty of holding other factors constant.

40 竞争与合作

While cooperation is the antithesis of competition, the need or desire to compete with others is a common impetus that motivates individuals to organize into a group and cooperate with each other in order to form a stronger competitive force. Cooperation in many areas such as farming and housing may be in the form of a cooperative or, alternately, in the form of a conventional business. Many people resort to this because they may cooperate by trading with each other or by altruistic sharing. Certain forms of cooperation are illegal in some jurisdictions because they alter the nature of access by others to economic or other resources. Thus, cooperation in the form of cartels or price-fixing may be illegal.

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Individualism is a term used to describe a moral, political, or social outlook that stresses human independence and the importance of individual self-reliance and liberty. Individualists promote the exercise of individual goals and desires. They oppose most external interference with an individual.s choices—whether by society, the state, or any other group or institution. Individualism is therefore opposed to holism, collectivism, fascism, communalism, statism, totalitarianism, and communitarianism, which stress that communal, group, societal, racial, or national goals should take priority over individual goals. Individualism is also opposed to the view that tradition, religion, or any other form of external moral standard should be used to limit an individual.s choice of actions.

Individualism has a controversial relationship with egoism （selfishness）. While some individualists are egoists, they usually do not argue that selfishness is inherently good. Rather, some argue that individuals are not duty-bound to any socially-imposed morality and that individuals should be free to choose to be selfish （or to choose any other lifestyle） if they so desire. Others still, such as Ayn Rand, argue against “moral relativism” and claim selfishness to be a virtue.

42 社会责任感

Social responsibility is an ethical or ideological theory that an entity, whether it is a government, corporation, organization or individual, has a responsibility to society. There is a large inequality in the means and roles of different entities to fulfill their claimed responsibility. This would imply that different entities have different responsibilities, insomuch as states should ensure the civil rights of their citizens, that corporations should respect and encourage the human rights of their employees and that citizens should abide by written laws. But social responsibility can mean more than these examples. Many NGOs accept that their roles and the responsibility of their members as citizens are to help improve society by taking a proactive stance in their societal roles. It can also imply that corporations have an implicit obligation to give back to society （such as is claimed as part of corporate social responsibility and/or stakeholder theory）.

Social responsibility is voluntary; it is about going above and beyond what is called for by the law （legal responsibility）. It involves an idea that it is better to be proactive toward a problem rather than reactive to a problem.

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behavior that might bring harm to the community, its people, or the environment before the behavior happens.

第二大类 行为类

5 内在驱动和外在刺激

Drives and desires can be described as a deficiency or need that activates behavior that is aimed at a goal or an incentive. These are thought to originate within the individual and may not require external stimuli to encourage the behavior. Basic drives could be sparked by deficiencies such as hunger, which motivates a person to seek food; whereas more subtle drives might be the desire for praise and approval, which motivates a person to behave in a manner pleasing to others. By contrast, the role of extrinsic rewards and stimuli can be seen in the example of training animals by giving them treats when they perform a trick correctly. The treat motivates the animals to perform the trick consistently, even later when the treat is removed from the process.

6 内在动机与内在驱动学生的三大特征

Intrinsic motivation is the drive for which people engage in an activity, without obvious external incentives, such as a hobby. Intrinsic motivation has been studied by educational psychologists since the 1970s, and numerous studies have found it to be associated with high educational achievement and enjoyment by students.

It is thought that students are more likely to be intrinsically motivated if they:

1. Attribute their educational results to internal factors that they can control （e.g. the amount of effort they put in）.

2. Believe they can be effective agents in reaching desired goals （i.e. the results are not determined by dumb luck）.

3. Are interested in mastering a topic, rather than just rote-learning to achieve good grades.

9 情感对行为的影响

Human emotion has a significant influence on, or can even be said to control, human behavior, though historically many cultures and philosophers have for various reasons discouraged allowing this influence to go

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In modern scientific thought, certain refined emotions are considered to be a complex neural trait of many domesticated and a few non-domesticated mammals. These were commonly developed in reaction to superior survival mechanisms and intelligent interaction with each other and the environment; as such, refined emotion is not in all cases as discrete and separate from natural neural function as was once assumed. Still, when humans function in civilized tandem, it has been noted that uninhibited acting on extreme emotion can lead to social disorder and crime.

13 行动理论

Action theory concerned with theories about the processes causing intentional （willful） human bodily movements of more or less complex kind. Basic action theory typically describes action as behavior caused by an agent in a particular situation. The agent.s desires and beliefs （e.g. my wanting a glass of water and believing the clear liquid in the cup in front of me is water） lead to bodily behavior （e.g. reaching over for the glass）. In the simple theory, the desire and belief jointly cause the action. We should take the concept of intention as basic and not analyzable into beliefs and desires.

14 行为的回报和强化

A reward, tangible or intangible, is presented after the occurrence of an action （i.e. behavior） with the intent to cause the behavior to occur again. This is done by associating positive meaning to the behavior. Studies show that if the person receives the reward immediately, the effect would be greater, and decreases as duration lengthens. Repetitive action-reward combination can cause the action to become habit.

Rewards can also be organized as extrinsic or intrinsic. Extrinsic rewards are external to the person; for example, praise or money. Intrinsic rewards are internal to the person; for example, satisfaction or accomplishment.

Some authors distinguish between two forms of intrinsic motivation: one based on enjoyment, the other on obligation. In this context, obligation refers to motivation based on what an individual thinks ought to be done. For instance, a feeling of responsibility for a mission may lead to helping others beyond what is easily observable, rewarded, or fun.

A reinforcer is different from reward, in that reinforcement is intended to

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addition of something to the environment.

15 选择的定义

Are we free to make our own choices? To answer the question, we must first cut the fat off the widely used definition of choice. Defining choice in this situation can be a difficult task. A popular definition of choice could be a mental process through which an individual weighs the consequences of their actions to create an ideal image of their preference to the outcome of their actions. But, when you look at this definition, you see that it suggests that someone who fails to carefully analyze their actions doesn.t actually make choices. Can we assume by this definition that choices are free? We can say yes, because according to this definition, if we do carefully analyze our actions, we create the outcome that we choose.

16 选择的自由性

Some people may say choice is not free. They may say that if we do not reflect carefully on our actions, we are not taking responsibility for them, leaving the cause of the action to some other force. When looking at the word responsibility in the one side of the argument, one may still draw up a few questions that need to be explained. If we are ignorant of our own responsibility in taking a course of action, how are we to know that we are not reflecting carefully on our actions? What are the standards of responsibility when reflecting on our actions? What if we do something that we do not know is wrong? To answer these criticisms, ignorance of our actions is natural and cannot affect our ability to rationalize to the best of our ability. In a given situation where it is impossible to know what is best, we have the ability to do what we think is best in that given situation. Assuming that an individual has the power to think about and carefully consider choices, they do have a free will within them that they can bring out in any situation, even if the person has no knowledge of what to do in that certain situation.

17 选择理论的十大公理

The Ten Axioms of Choice Theory：

1. The only person whose behavior we can control is our own.

2. All we can give another person is information.

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4. The problem relationship is always part of our present life.

5. What happened in the past has everything to do with what we are today, but we can only satisfy our basic needs right now and plan to continue satisfying them in the future.

6. We can only satisfy our needs by satisfying the pictures in our dream.

7. All we do is to behave.

8. All behavior is Total Behavior and is made up of four components: acting, thinking, feeling and physiology.

9. All Total Behavior is chosen, but we only have direct control over the acting and thinking components. We can only control our feeling and physiology indirectly through how we choose to act and think.

10. All total behavior is designated by verbs and named by the part that is the most recognizable.

20 弗洛伊德观点： 影响决策的三大要素

Sigmund Freud proposes three aspects of our personality structure that directly effects our decisions. The elements that Sigmund Freud talks about are the Id, Ego, and Super Ego. These three elements play an important role in our decisions and support the view of not having free will.

The Id is the source of our basic drives and all of our psychological energy. Sigmund Freud also states that we all are born with this element. The Id is also refereed to the pleasure principle, which also represents self-gratification. The Id has two basic drives—sex and aggression. The Id is the part of us that is seeking pleasure through the immediate satisfaction of its needs. In reference to the Id, it is always trying to satisfy every impulse whenever and wherever, it knows no limits.

The second element of our personality is the ego; Freud relates this as the reality principle. The ego is the practical side of our personality; it is aware of what.s possible and impossible and is able to accept limits and to act in a practical way. The ego.s main purpose is to figure out appropriate ways to satisfy the id.s desire.

In a sense, the ego is like congress and the id the president. The president can not take major actions without the approval of congress. In short, the id supplies the power and the ego supplies the control. The reaction of the two acts as a driving force in which our decisions are made, thus eliminating free

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24 自我控制

The self-control of motivation is increasingly understood as a subset of emotional intelligence; a person may be highly intelligent according to a more conservative definition （as measured by many intelligence tests）, yet unmotivated to dedicate this intelligence to certain tasks. Yale School of Management Professor Victor Vroom.s “expectancy theory” provides an account of when people will decide whether to exert self-control to pursue a particular goal.

30 团体行为不是个人行为的加和

The behavior of groups cannot be understood solely as the aggregate behavior of individuals. It is not possible, for example, to understand modern warfare by summing up the aggressive tendencies of individuals. A person may behave very differently in a crowd—say, when at a football game, at a religious service, or on a picket line—than when alone or with family members. Several children together may vandalize a building, even though none of them would do it on his or her own. By the same token, an adult will often be more generous and responsive to the needs of others as a member of, say, a club or religious group than he or she would be inclined to be in private. The group situation provides the rewards of companionship and acceptance for going along with the shared action of the group and makes it difficult to assign blame or credit to any one person.

32 团体对行为的影响

In addition to belonging to the social and cultural settings into which they are born, people voluntarily join groups based on shared occupations, beliefs, or interests （such as unions, political parties, or clubs）. Membership in these groups influences how people think of themselves and how others think of them. These groups impose expectations and rules that make the behavior of members more predictable and that enable each group to function smoothly and retain its identity.

The rules may be informal and conveyed by example, such as how to behave at a social gathering, or they may be written rules that are strictly enforced. Formal groups often signal the kind of behavior they favor by

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（such as threats, fines, or rejections）.

Affiliation with any social group, whether one joins it voluntarily or is born into it, brings some advantages of larger numbers: the potential for pooling resources （such as money or labor）, concerted effort （such as strikes, boycotts, or voting）, and identity and recognition （such as organizations, emblems, or attention from the media）. Within each group, the members. attitudes, which often include an image of their group as being superior to others, help ensure cohesion within the group but can also lead to serious conflict with other groups. Attitudes toward other groups are likely to involve stereotyping—treating all members of a group as though they were the same and perceiving in those people.s actual behavior only those qualities that fit the observer＇s preconceptions. Such social prejudice may include blind respect for some categories of people, such as doctors or clergy, as well as blind disrespect for other categories of people who are, say, foreign-born or women.

第三大类 教育类

1 教育的三大目的

Fundamental purposes that have been proposed for education include: The enterprise of civil society depends on educating young people to become responsible, thoughtful and enterprising citizens. This is an intricate, challenging task requiring deep understanding of ethical principles, moral values, political theory, aesthetics, and economics, not to mention an understanding of who children are, in themselves and in society.

Progress in every practical field depends on having capacities that schooling can educate.

Education is thus a means to foster the individual’s, society’s, and even humanity’s future development and prosperity. Emphasis is often put on economic success in this regard.

One’s individual development and the capacity to fulfill one’s own purposes can depend on an adequate preparation in childhood. Education can thus attempt to give a firm foundation for the achievement of personal fulfillment. The better the foundation is built, the more successful the hild will be. Simple basics in education can carry a child far.

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2 教育面临的问题：

知识快速更新、 全民教育的普及、 个性化教育的实施困难

We increasingly see education as a critical component of democratic society. For intelligent decisions in democratic society, we need an educated population. Furthermore, we increasingly see the need for lifelong education. Society changes faster, so what is learned when we are young is fast outdated. So this need for universal education further complicatesthe problems created by growing populations, by increasing the numbers we must consider.

One aspect of education that must be considered is that all students are different, with different backgrounds, knowledge, interests and learning styles. Each student should be treated individually.

But our current modes of learning provide little individualization. Every student tends to be provided with the same learning experiences focused around a white Anglo-Saxon curriculum.

This cookie-cutter approach to learning works for a few students, but many do not learn, or learn only partially. Our classes are already too large to provide individualized learning.

7 正规教育体系的两大基本假设

Two fundamental assumptions that underlie formal education systems are that students （a） retain knowledge and skills they acquire at school, and （b） can apply them in situations outside the classroom. But are these assumptions accurate? Research has found that, even when students report not using the knowledge acquired at school, a considerable portion is retained for many years and long term retention is strongly dependent on the initial level of mastery. One study found that university students who took a child development course and attained high grades showed, when tested 10 years later, average retention scores of about 30%, whereas those who obtained moderate or lower grades showed average retention scores of about 20%. There is much less consensus on the crucial question of how much knowledge acquired in school transfers to tasks encountered outside formal educational settings, and how such transfer occurs. Some psychologists claim that research evidence for this type of far transfer is scarce, while others claim there is abundant evidence of far transfer in specific domains.